Thank God
that’s over. I rest my head back and let the old armchair
envelop my body. I loosen my black tie and rest my eyes on the
yellowing ceiling. No wonder Janet’s dad had loved this chair
– it really is damn comfortable. I look over at the three of
them – so alike and yet so different.

No matter whether you’re six or sixty, it’s always
tough to lose a parent. Janet and her sisters had now lost both in the
space of a year. Her mum had always seemed strong and fit, whilst
latterly her dad had a whole string of medical problems and illnesses.
Not surprising for a forty a day man. He always said they’d
kept him going through the trials and tribulations of running his own
business – and bringing up three daughters. That last always
said with a smile and a sigh. By the time he sold the business off and
retired, the cigarettes and the pressure had taken their toll. He was a
shadow of the hard-as-nails man I’d first, nervously met over
twenty years ago. But it was mum who’d gone first –
she’d soldiered on through pain no-one realised she had until
it was too late. The tumour had done its irreparable damage and she
faded quickly after diagnosis. A blessing really, but it had
nonetheless hit Janet’s dad hard, and he seemed to just give
up after that.

So here we are. The last of the family have left after the inevitable
“we must meet you at something other than a funeral or
wedding,” and the agreements that they’d be in
touch, with phone calls everyone knew would never be made.

“Get me a drink, Ellie.”

That’s Michael, Ellie’s husband. Eleanor, Ellie for
short is the oldest, and as she’s the tallest of the three,
the extra height enables her to carry off the excess pounds pretty
well. Her elegance belies the lack of confidence that’s
obvious to anyone who knows her well. She’s always been in
the dominating shadow of husband Michael. My view? She’s
terrific, he’s an arsehole. She’d be twice the
person she is if she dumped him. But she never will. Oh she’s
not physically abused, or even mentally – but the toughness
and confidence of her father seemed to have passed her by, and Michael
preys on that.

Without hesitation, Ellie gets up and asks if anybody else wants one.
The nods and murmured “Yes’s” prompt
Janet to offer to come and help.

Jackie, the youngest of the three, is lying sideways in one of the
winged armchairs. Her legs are dangling over one arm, and her short,
dark hair contrasting with the light beige of the chair’s
fabric. Everyone joked she must be the milkman’s –
both her sisters have wavy, blond hair. She might not have had her
father’s looks, but she definitely inherited his drive and
flair for business. At present Jackie is “between
husbands”, having gone through two so far.

The drinks arrive and Ellie dutifully sits at Michael’s feet.
Janet sits on the arm of my chair and wraps her arm round my shoulder.
I break the silence:

“So what are you guys going to do tomorrow when Mike and I
have gone back to work?”

Jackie snorts and reminds us we aren’t the only
bread-winners. She says she’s got tomorrow off to help her
sisters and then it’s back to PR Agency she runs. Janet sighs:

“I don’t think clearing out mum and dad’s
stuff will be much fun. But it’s not a job you can give to
someone else. So while you’re protecting the public
we’ll be here.”

I say that I wish I could stay and offer some support, but I have a
press conference about how ASBO’s have reduced crime on one
of the patch’s most troubled estates. I tell them
I’ll get back as soon as I can.

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one
…!” says Jackie with little humour.

“Unfortunately Deputy Chief Constables do bugger all
policing, so I don’t feel like a policeman any
more.”

The conversation drifts on about how they’ll go about
clearing the place until everyone agrees it’s been a long
day, and we all go off to bed.

The Press Conference is a reasonable success; a minor miracle
considering the shambolic briefing I got (must give someone a bit of a
rollicking for that), and I head off to provide support and some muscle
power for Janet and her sisters.

The place is a maze of black bags – rubbish for the tip in
that group, recyclables in that pile, Oxfam shop stuff in those bags
over there. God, they must have worked their socks off. I find Janet
and give her a hug. The red eyes show they’ve all shed some
tears – not surprising really, having to go through stuff
that you recognise from your childhood. Janet explains they just kept
at it to keep the tears at bay. All I can do is nod, and give her
another hug.

I point to a pile of boxes and papers sitting on the table:

“What’s that lot?”

“Oh you can put those in the car. We found them in the loft
and I volunteered to go through them and make sure there
isn’t anything important there. You know – winning
Premium Bonds from 1969 – that kind of thing.”

I manage a smile and utter that we should be so lucky. With the back
seats down in the Range Rover, I load up some bags and do a run to the
tip. On my return, Jackie announces she’d better be off,
gives hugs and kisses all round and invites us all over for dinner on
Saturday. That will brighten everybody’s mood.
Jackie’s dinner parties are always brilliant. As well as her
dad’s business brain, she, like Janet, inherited his flair in
the kitchen. He didn’t cook much, but what he did was simply
brilliant. Janet always says I fell in love with her Lasagne before I
fell in love with her. Jackie’s dinner parties are also a bit
of a hoot because we get to see what misfit she’s collected
as her latest bedmate.

But Jackie’s departure, and along with it her sparky, upbeat
humour, leads me to suggest it’s time that Janet and Ellie
call it a day. Ellie looks tired, and for once as old as her years.
She’s standing in the living room and behind her I can see a
photograph of her father. Maybe it’s the lack of make up
– Ellie is never seen in public minus make-up – so
maybe it’s that which makes the resemblance so uncanny. She
really is her father’s spitting image. So with another round
of hugs, Ellie climbs into her Porsche Chelsea tractor
(Mike’s got to keep up his image), and we head home.

It’s often said that how come, with over two hundred TV
channels at our fingertips, there’s never anything to watch.
I’ve even flicked through the sixty hours of recordings on
the V plus box – still nothing. Behind me, sitting at the
table, Janet’s is going through the contents of the cardboard
box. I have to say I’m impressed , I can think of very few
people who would have tackled it so soon and not put it all off until
another day. But that’s typical of her, another trait she
inherited from her dad.

Something must be absorbing her. Until the last fifteen minutes or so,
she’d asked me a question or made some comment
(“Good God, here’s an old Building Society book
that looks to have three grand in it” or “Do you
think anyone’s interested in an old ration book?”)
But for the last quarter of an hour or so, she’s been quiet.
I decide it’s coffee time, and just as I‘m about to
ask her if she wants one, or something stronger, she lets out a
whispered “Oh my God!”

I ask her what the matter is, and she just lifts her head and looks at
me. Her eyes are unfocussed. Her mouth is an “O”.
Her expression is a mixture of shock and disbelief. She starts to mouth
some words but no sounds come out. Then she shakes her head slowly:

“I think you’d better read this
…”

She holds out a notepad - the type you’d have found in any
school in the 50’s and 60’s. It has a hardback
– mainly blue with white, wavy diagonals. The yellowing pages
are ruled with a red margin. It looks like Janet was about a third of
the way through it. I instantly recognised the writing. It’s
been on every Christmas, birthday and anniversary card we got from her
mum and dad over the years. It’s also pretty obvious what the
book is – her mum’s diary. Well, not so much a
diary – more a 1960’s equivalent of a blog. I say
that because the passages aren’t dated. Well, some have a day
- “Thursday 12th” type of thing, but it’s
not consistent, and there’s no clue about the year.

Janet points to a passage:

“I think I need that drink – you read,
I’ll get them.”

I can hear the clink of glasses and tinkling of ice as I read the
elegant writing. It would be more at home on parchment, not in some
scruffy old notebook:

The doctor’s confirmed it. I’ve missed two periods
and I am pregnant. I don’t know what I’m going to
do! John can do the arithmetic as well as the next man –
he’ll know. He’ll know the baby isn’t
his. He’ll know it was conceived while he was away in
Sunderland. He only came back one weekend, and was too tired to do
anything. Maybe that’s why it happened. I felt so lonely, so
abandoned. I know he was working hard for our future. But oh God, what
am I going to do?

I read it, and read it again. I looked over at Janet who handed me the
scotch. She sipped her Bailey’s looking at me over the rim of
the glass.

“It’s me,” she said, her eyes filling up
with tears.

“How do you know? Does she say so?”

“Oh come on, you’re a policeman. And I believe
you’re quite a good one. Look at the evidence.”

I look at her, my eyes asking the question. But I know the answer
that’s coming.

“Ellie looks more like dad than dad, for God’s
sake. So it’s not her. And Jackie has got all dad’s
brains, all his nauss. Christ she can even cook like him –
and she was always his favourite.”

I look at her, there is the slightest hint of a movement and in the
blink of an eye she is in my arms. I can feel the wetness of her tears,
as she talks about what if it is her. What I want to say, but
instinctively realise that now is not the time, is something about how
the important thing is how you were all a family. Your mum –
and your dad – loved you all. They gave up lots for the three
of you, and they were justifiably proud of their daughters and their
grandchildren.

“What are we going to tell El and Jack?” The words
are little more than a whisper.

I take a breath.

“Well, we don’t have to tell them anything. After
all, what they don’t know …”

She pulls herself away to arms length and shakes her head.

“No, we have to tell them. We have to work out which one of
us it is. After all, I think if it is me, I’d like to know
who my father was.”

After a bit more discussion we agree. Firstly, we’ll both
read the diary and see if there are any clues as to which one of the
three it is. Then we’ll tell Ellie and Jackie on Saturday
what we’ve discovered, and take it from there. I
don’t get much sleep that night because even in the brief
spell she’s asleep, Janet is restless and tossing and
turning. I just try to hold her and cuddle up next to her, to reassure
her that I’m there for her; to just be a bit of stability in
what’s become an unstable world.

Friday evening sees me in my study with a notepad and Janet’s
mum’s diary. It starts with what seems to be one of her first
meetings with the man she refers to as “him”. The
whole book, which is less than one third filled, is devoted to their
relationship. Her feelings about the effect it is having on her
marriage is briefly mentioned, but it’s all about
“him”. I jot down any clues about when it might
have been, what year it was. But there’s hardly anything. I
find it odd that there isn’t any mention of any of the girls,
of the effect it might have on her family. So that would point to the
Ellie, as the oldest, being the one. But like Janet I find that hard to
believe – she really does look like the man we thought was
her father.

At the end of almost two hours, Janet comes in:

“Any clues, Sherlock?”

“Sorry Watson, I’ve a few things to follow up, but
I’m not hopeful. It’s very focussed on your mum and
on the guy. There are hardly any external references. Weirdest of all
is that there’s no reference to existing children.”

“Oh God. If it’s Ellie she’ll be
devastated.”

I nod agreement:

“Well, let’s see what turns up. After all, when we
talk tomorrow, you may all agree to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Janet raises her eyebrows and conveys the fact that she
doesn’t believe that for a minute. I go through my
scribblings with her, and after a bit more discussion, we decide to
call it a night.

Jackie’s dinner party is a bit different to the usual.
Firstly, there’s no misfit boyfriend to grill, and then
there’s the feeling of apprehension that Janet and I have
about the conversation that will come over coffee. But
Jackie’s main course is as brilliant as ever. Also, we all
knew it was her dad’s favourite dish. I wonder again about
Jackie, and the nurture versus nature argument. Maybe she has her
dad’s flair for business and her dad’s touch at
cookery because she was his favourite. And rather than inherit those
things, she learned them by being with him so much. Maybe he was
compensating, showing that he could love a child he knew
wasn’t his. But that didn’t seem right either.
Knowing what a hard man he was, and his traditional upbringing, it just
didn’t seem to fit.

The coffee is eventually poured, along with the Bailey’s and
the Brandy. Janet, who’s sitting opposite me glances at me
biting at her lower lip, she takes a deep breath and says:

“Well, in it I found an old notebook of mum’s. And
she…” her voice starts to crack up, so I decide to
take over:

“It seems your mum had an affair.” At this point I
had expected some exclamations, but the room is so quiet you can even
hear the fridge in the kitchen. Everyone’s eyes, even
Michael’s, are riveted on me.

“But more than that; she got pregnant.” I let that
sink in for a moment, and continue, my voice getting quieter by the
sentence.

“Janet and I have read every word in the book, and there are
no indications as to when this happened. Except that it was definitely
after your dad and her got married.”

The questions come thick and fast. Janet and I answer them as best we
can. Ellie starts to cry. The book gets handed around and I realise,
everyone’s looking at me. They expect me to tell them
– what I’m not sure. I take the plunge:

“Look, I’ve got a few things from the book that I
can work on. Why don’t you give me a week to see if I can dig
up some details – that is, if you want to find out.”

“You mean, find out which one of us is a bastard? Because
let’s face it, it’s me. I mean, look at
me!” Tears are starting down Jackie’s face, and she
is obviously feeling a lot of pain. As she’s next to me, I
grab her hand and say:

“If everyone’s in agreement you want me to dig
deeper then I will. I’ll even try to find out who the father
is.”

The tearful trio exchange glances, and it’s Ellie who has
suddenly found some strength:

“Yes. Yes please. I think we’d all like to know.
Find out as much as you can.”

The week is a busy one – in both my regular work, and in my
private project: who is the daughter, and who, as they say, is the
daddy? I’m heavily involved in the latest government
initiative
on knife crime, and have devoted little direct effort to finding out
about Janet’s mother’s dark secret –
apart from
firing off a few lines of enquiry.

But on Thursday afternoon I have a spare half hour over lunch, and
there’s a breakthrough. At last I have figured out what year
the
diary was written, and I can’t believe it took me so long.
Then
it’s down to a bit of old fashioned police work. Given the
hectic
schedule my boss and secretary have conspired to give me on Thursday
and Friday, it’s a minor miracle that by Friday afternoon I
have
a good idea of what happened. But there’s still a piece
missing.

Janet calls on Friday just before I leave, ostensibly to ask what I
want for dinner tonight. I tell her we’ll go out, and she
casually asks if I’ve had any success. I answer with a
“Yes, some” and refuse to tell her any more. We go
to our
favourite local Italian restaurant and her questions get more and more
anxious. I tell her I am still missing some information and that
hopefully by dinner tomorrow I will have an answer for them.

The next day I make an excuse to go into work, as much as anything just
to get away from Janet’s questions. The last piece falls into
place and I get home at the same time as Jackie arrives for dinner. By
the time I’ve showered and changed Ellie and Mike have
arrived.
The question about who is their mother’s love child is the
elephant in the room. We talk London 2012, credit crunch,
Grey’s
Anatomy – anything but their mother’s life forty
years ago.
In the middle of a pause in the strained conversation my work mobile
chirps. I excuse myself and take the call. When I come back Janet gives
me a quizzical look. I smile:

“It’s okay, I don’t have to go
in.”

We sit down to dinner and I decide to relieve the tension.

“Look, I do have some news for you all, but I’d
prefer to
leave it until we’ve had dinner. I’ll tell you all
everything I’ve learned – and it is quite a lot,
over
coffee.”

The rest of the meal is a bit strained as everyone makes polite
conversation. Eventually we get to coffee and liqueurs and everyone
pauses and turns to me. I take a deep breath and look around. I put
both hands around my Brandy snifter and start:

“Last week I agreed to try and find out the details behind
your
mum’s diary. Well I didn’t think I would have much
success
but I have surprised myself. The first breakthrough came from the diary
– as you know there were few dates and days, so working out
the
year was impossible. That is until in one of the more uninteresting
sections, she refers to going to church – so that means the
day
was Sunday – and she gives the date. So that narrows down the
year to two possibilities – 6 years apart.”

“So what are the years?” Janet’s voice
sounds
desperate.

“Hang on,” I say. “I then set about to
find out which
of the two possible years it was. I went to your dad’s old
company and asked if they had any records from the 60’s.
Amazingly all the invoices and contracts are still there. So I looked
through the details of the two possible years until I found a contract
for a company in Sunderland. After that it was a case of getting the
details about the birth. That was a slog as your mum’s diary
finishes at the point she told your dad. So we really have no idea when
the baby was born. But I found the birth certificate, and the identity
of the man who fathered the baby is clear for all to see.”

At this point I take out the photocopy, but before I can unfold it the
door bell chimes. I stand up to get it and as I leave I can hear
puzzled questions. All three have obviously seen their Birth
Certificates. So what’s going on?

I come back into the room, and hold the door open. The woman I let in
looks strikingly like Jackie – same nose and eyes, but the
blonde
hair is all Janet – an almost identical cut.

“I’d like you to meet Ann Hargreaves. Ann is your
half
sister.”

Janet is the first to react. She gets up and moves to shake
Ann’s
hand, then stops and puts her arms around her, and whispers:

“Hello, I’m Janet” A pause and
Ann’s arm reach
out and hug her half sister. When they unfold their arms both have
tears in their eyes, and then Jackie and Ellie put their arms round the
two them. There is a lot of streaked make up as they start to make up
for the years they have missed.

For the next hour or so Ellie, Janet and Jackie tell Ann about the
mother she never knew, and she in turn tells them about her father,
their mother’s lover. He had never married and
Ann’s
grandmother, who had brought her up, once told her it was because he
loved her mother until the day he died.

As I sit back and look at the four of them, so alike and yet so
different, I marvel at the fact that they are already behaving like a
family. I also have the opportunity to fill in the gaps and the
information I learned from the man who was their father’s
number
two back in the sixties. By ten thirty the story I’ve pieced
together has been told, and a few more tears have been shed. During the
time the girls’ father was away on business, their mother
bumped
into an old school friend. They renewed their friendship and grew
close. It turned into an affair. Their father, like many men of his
generation was shocked by his wife’s betrayal when she told
him.
He would not agree to her keeping the baby and demanded she give it up,
and have no more contact with the child or her lover. Ann’s
father took responsibility for her, and she was raised by him and her
grandparents. Ann’s father died two days before
Janet’s mum
passed away last year.
.